Intro

Hello! I will go over a simple isometric painting idea that you can try for yourself. I will try to do my best to make it short and not take a lot of your time.

What is isometric?

Isometric is a way of constructing perspective in a very specific way. It is one of the easiest perspective methods. The objects will look the same if flipped horizontally. This makes it easier to construct things in 3D. Here is a difference between regualar perspective and isometric.

Isometric has a 60-degree angle in the core. There is also a quick way to create an isometric island in clip studio paint.

Just make a rectangle with the tool. Pick any thickness you desire.

 

After that, you can go into Free Transform with Ctrl+T. Rotate it 90 degrees to make a rhombus. Hit enter to apply it.

 

After that you can do free transform again and change the Height scale ratio to 60. Keep aspect ratio should be off! You created an island. Now you can just duplicate it and move it down. You will have a cube.

 

 

It might be tedious to do every time, so there was a person who actually created a great material that let's you use rules that automatically make your brush work in the same angles.

They also created an amazing tutorial on isometric topics as well. It goes a lot more in-depth, I think it could be a great read. This tutorial is more about storytelling and rendering.

Let's start with a sketch

I did not have any specific ideas in mind, so I started sketching a room. I gathered a lot of references from other artists to see what they did to get inspired.

This is what I ended up with. You can check out my video to see the full timelapse. I wanted to make a small room and ended up with some Asian samurai feel in it. I think it could be very calming and the interior design of the culture always looked pleasing to me.

 

The main idea is always to create a story. Is that person old or young. Maybe they retired samurai or is it just a collectible. Is it ancient or new. All these questions will help you develop your own environment.

After my initial sketch, I do another pass of line art. My best advice is to use the same size and opacity for the entire artwork. It makes it look consistent and feel appealing. I also added a tree and books, which made it feel more cozy.

After that, I do some color block out. The room will be lit from the window on the left. I usually go for very colorful midtones and then develop the color after. Sometimes I remove it or saturate it.

 

After I am set on light I just keep making more shadows by using Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light.

After this, I flatten almost everything and keep playing with Color Dodge and levels adjustment. Sometimes HSL and other filters. I add noise and try to see if I missed anything in my painting.

Color correction and some levels made finished the painting for me. I think it was very fun and challenging to paint this. I also think I went too dark with it in the end, but at least I learned a lot about it. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I will do my best to answer them under the youtube video. I hope you learned something and happy painting.

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